Believe Like a Child (34 page)
I
n the weeks following Alessa’s run-in with her family, she spent more time on the weekends in homeless shelters. Remo and Lucy were always with her. The residents at the shelters had remarked a noticeable change in Alessa. She was quieter than usual and her characteristic enthusiasm was absent.
On a Saturday afternoon, one of the teenage boys she had been working with for sometime approached Alessa in the park. He had been on the streets since he was thirteen. In the three years he had been homeless, Alessa, he felt, was the only person who understood him. The boy had been offering sex for just enough money to buy himself meals. Since he was gay, the other homeless teens assumed he was making money doing something he enjoyed. Alessa, however, understood the sacrifices he was making to keep himself alive.
“Alessa,” he now told her, “I don’t know what’s wrong, but you ain’t been acting like yourself. If you need to talk to someone, I’m here to listen.”
For a change, Alessa was eager to share her feelings with someone other than Ebby or Remo.
When she finished relating what had happened with her family, he said, “See, that’s the shit that makes you so special. People fuck you over and you keep on barreling along like an eighteen-wheeler on an open highway. I don’t know why you feel bad. Sounds like you said all the shit you needed to say. You’ve faced your monster and you’re still here. Get over it.”
After he left, Alessa mulled over his words. Thinking how right his advice was, simple though it sounded, she laughed to herself. The boy was dead on with his opinion. She had to get over it. She had faced her monster and was still alive.
So I was raped when I was a kid,
she thought to herself.
Maybe that’s why I’m stronger. Get over it.
She knew the people on the streets didn’t judge her for having been a stripper and a prostitute. In fact, they loved her all the more, because she had used what God had given her to make a living and wasn’t embarrassed to tell people about it.
After her conversation with the boy, Alessa found herself feeling more positive. She did not reject the idea that maybe, God had allowed this to happen to her so she could help others. Maybe he had wanted her to find Lucy. Maybe God had needed her to suffer so she could understand the suffering of others and help them heal. She realized her line of thinking was a bit theatrical, the kind of stuff you saw in the movies, but it was certainly better than assuming she deserved to be punished for her past.
In bed that night, Alessa told Remo, “When I get my degree and a job, I’m going to open a shelter for the homeless. You know, a safe house for young girls or young mothers with kids.”
Remo rolled over and scooped her up in his arms. “That sounds like a good idea,” he murmured. “We don’t have to wait until you get your degree, though. You could use the money you saved from your dancing for a down payment on a house and we can use my salary to pay the mortgage.”
Alessa hesitated. “Really?” she said, somewhat skeptical. “How will you pay that mortgage on your salary alone?”
Remo smiled. “We’ll work it out. We don’t have to figure it all out now.”
Alessa stared at him, wondering if he had gone mad. “Remo,” she said, “I get what you’re saying, but we can’t just do this without knowing how we’ll pay for everything.”
“Alessa, you just need to jump in, sometimes, and believe,” he told her. “You need to believe like a child.”
Her expression darkened, as she wrestled with a concept that was so alien to her. “I don’t know what that looks like, Remo,” she said wistfully. “I never got to be a child.”
Remo realized his mistake and was furious with himself for his insensitivity. She was so strong now he’d forgotten that Alessa had never had a normal childhood. She had never dreamed about her future.
“When I was a child,” Alessa said miserably, “all I focused on was how awful I felt. I dreaded every single day, never believing that better times would come, that the future could hold something positive for me.”
Remo felt her anguish and his heart went out to her at the thought of how much she had lost. “Well,” he said gently, “most kids live with the excitement of getting a new baseball glove or going to Disney World. Kids don’t think about how good stuff happens. They just know good things will come.”
Alessa smiled. “That sounds like a wonderful place to be,” she said wonderingly. “Teach me how, Remo.”
“First, you have to believe. You need to just expect good things to happen and they will. You are where you are today, because you just expected it to happen, right? You wanted a better life and believed you would have one. That’s what I’m talking about.”
Alessa burrowed herself into his bare chest. It meant everything to her that Remo loved her enough to invest in her dream. She struggled with herself, hesitating to believe it would be so simple. Then she thought about all the things that had brought her to this moment.
Maybe
, she thought,
I do know how to believe like a child, after all
.
T
he very next morning, Alessa and Remo shared their plan with Lucy. It thrilled them to see how excited she was over it. The little girl loved the homeless people they visited. She knew them all, feeling as though she had family all over the city. And now she would get a chance to do something important for them. Brimming with enthusiasm and eager now to find a house that would serve as a shelter, Lucy hounded the two of them to start searching.
“You know,” Remo remarked, “most ten-year-old girls want to go clothes shopping, but not you. You’re more excited about buying a place to help your friends out than getting stuff for yourself. How did you get to be so special?”
Lucy jumped on top of Remo who was sitting on the sofa. “From you and Alessa,” she giggled. Then her young face turned serious. “And because I know what it’s like to be homeless. It really sucks, Remo. It really, really sucks! You never know if you’re going to have food or will have to go hungry and some people are mean to you, just because you’re not as lucky as they are. They look at you funny and it makes you feel like something is wrong with you.”
Remo got up from the sofa and pulled out the telephone book. “Let’s see here. Yeah, there it is.” He picked up the phone and dialed the number.
Alessa and Lucy just looked on and listened to his side of the exchange.
“Hello, my name is Remo,” he said into the phone, “I’m looking for a realtor who can help me find a multi-family property. Yes, I can. Well, I live right down the block from your office. Yep, we can meet you in thirty minutes. Great, I appreciate your help. See you soon. Bye.”
Remo turned to the two women in his life. “Okay,” he said decisively, “the realtor can see us in thirty minutes. Let’s do it!”
They all cheered and went to their rooms to get ready for the appointment.
A fifteen-minute discussion with the realtor and they were off to see row homes scattered throughout the city. They visited several, one after another, and by the time they retreated to their apartment, it was one confusing blur. The three agreed during further debate that they hadn’t found the right place just yet. They told the agent to line up more for the next day and the threesome sat down to dinner. Alessa had started trying her hand at cooking in order to contribute her bit to the household. With Remo paying all the bills, she felt she needed to do something more constructive than just going to school. The thought of opening a shelter for the homeless gave Alessa renewed hope and Remo was happy to see her in better spirits.
By the next day, they’d found the perfect place. The fourth row home they visited was the one they set their hearts on the moment they entered it. It was a three-story building. A large two-bedroom apartment occupied the top floor. It had been recently renovated, with hardwood floors throughout. Lucy went crazy at the thought that if they did buy it, she would have her own bathroom. Alessa and Remo loved the master bedroom too. There was also a large, open kitchen and a cozy living room. What the three of them loved the most, though, was the space on the first and second floors. There were three two-bedroom apartments on each floor and while they were much smaller than the one on the top floor, they would comfortably house four to six people.
Before they left, Remo made the realtor a fair offer.
Back at home, they talked endlessly about all the things they could do and the people they would be able to help. An hour later, the telephone rang and Remo answered it. Alessa and Lucy clung to each other tensely, watching the expression on his face for a sign that their offer had been accepted. Knowing quite well that the girls were waiting for some indication from him that the house was now theirs to live in, Remo mischievously kept them in suspense by maintaining a poker face.
Then he hung up, turned to them and announced matter-of-factly, “Pack your shit. We got it.”
The girls shrieked with delight and ran to hug him. Knowing from personal experience what a blessing the shelter would be for some of the homeless people who had become their friends, Alessa and Lucy could hardly contain their excitement and their joy.
The next two months flew by, as they prepared to move into their new home. Their next big responsibility involved the selection of the people who would live there. So many of the homeless needed housing and the house they had bought could only accommodate thirty-six residents. Alessa decided they would give priority to women and children. Six in each apartment would be tight, but she knew it was a better option than the streets or the “typical” homeless shelters that existed in the city. The three agreed not to discuss the matter with their homeless friends until they had figured out who would live in their shelter. They came up with three criteria to help them in their decision. The residents would have to be women under the age of twenty-one. Once they moved in, they would either have to work or go to school. And they could only live there until they were twenty-one. Alessa felt this was the only fair way to decide. The idea was to get younger people off the streets and back into school or working, so they could support themselves. This new home, as she visualized it, would be a place to rest, between heaven and hell. She couldn’t give them everything and she couldn’t help everyone, but she could make a difference—thirty-six people at a time.
When the day of settlement on the new home arrived, they were all excited. After closing, they quickly drove to the property and buzzed through the house.
“This is the greatest fucking moment of my life!” Alessa exclaimed to Remo. Her excitement was that of a child’s on Christmas morning who had come downstairs to see what Santa had left her. “Next to finding you and Lucy, of course,” she added. “Now, let’s go upstairs and see our new digs.”
O
ver the next month, when Alessa wasn’t in school, she would be painting and fixing the place up in a mad rush to get it ready for the people it was meant for. Remo and Lucy fell in line like two soldiers, as Alessa barked orders at them. The three of them had a great time working on this project together.
Ebby came to see the house and was proud of them all. In a quiet moment, she sat with Alessa and said, “You have really made a good life for yourself. You should be proud. You probably never realized how much you’ve accomplished. No matter how hard your life has been—and it was really hard—you never let self-pity get you down. You are someone most people would envy, Alessa.”
Alessa laughed at her and said, “Oh no, you wouldn’t envy me, if you saw some of the guys I had to fuck.”
Ebby wrinkled her nose, as if she had just smelled shit. “When are you going to clean out your potty mouth?” she inquired, mockingly.
Alessa put her arm around her. “Never,” she said, smiling. “It’s in my DNA. You should know that by now. It might do you some good if you dropped an F-bomb every now and then.”
As the two women settled back, they shared great energy and a feeling of closeness and contentment. Alessa had loved all the friends she had made along the way, including Rhonda and Tasha, but her relationship with Ebby was different. This was one woman who had given her the sense of inner peace she needed to motivate her into being a better person. It was the same with Remo and Lucy. They continued to nourish her spirit with the hope that she could achieve more than she had ever imagined possible.
When the house was ready to be occupied, Alessa made a list of the homeless teenagers she thought they should invite in first. It was a harrowing task, because there were so many of them who needed help to get off the streets. When she showed Remo and Lucy the list, they agreed with all, but a few. Lucy was adamant about including one eighteen-year-old girl they knew, who had been beaten so brutally and regularly by her parents since she was a small child that her arms and legs were permanently scarred. The girl had related how her father would make her get under the shower so she would be wet before he beat her with his belt. The scars from her wounds would serve as an eternal reminder of the hell she’d escaped. Alessa gave in, because Lucy’s reasoning was compelling. She knew she would have to take some other poor soul off the list to give this teen a place. It was a bitter-sweet process.
The decision to help a selected few, while others remained on the streets, was hard. Alessa persuaded herself that it was better to help some than none at all, but it didn’t make the process any easier. Remo chose not to intervene, as Alessa and Lucy prepared the list. He knew many of them, but didn’t know all their stories or what had driven them to homelessness. Alessa knew everything there was to know about each girl. They opened up to her and she was the one they often went to, when they needed to cry or scream or laugh about their lives.
Alessa was relentless in her pursuit to make a difference in the hell she had escaped. Remo told her he didn’t understand how she could keep going back to her past. In her place, he would have wanted to push those memories into the far recesses of his mind. Alessa explained that her experiences on being treated like an invisible being when she was homeless drove her to help those condemned to the streets to make their presence felt, to be seen. That was the key to Alessa’s impact on them. When they were with her, they were seen. For some, that was the difference between hope and hopelessness.
Once the residents’ list was settled, the three of them set out to talk with each of girls they had chosen. Meeting them, one by one, they explained what they were offering: the right to live in their row home for free, but on the condition that they worked or went to school. Those who worked could keep their earnings, as long as they could prove that they were saving at least fifty percent of what they earned. It took them the whole weekend to talk to the thirty six teenagers that would be the first residents. The girls all accepted the terms and conditions, which didn’t surprise Alessa, since she had picked those with the most passionate desire to make a better life for themselves and, for some, their children.
On Sunday night, the three of them were eating dinner and talking excitedly about the upcoming week.
Suddenly, Alessa blurted out, “Oh my God!”
Remo and Lucy both looked at her, startled.
“It just came to me,” Alessa said. “We need a name for our new home. We can call it the Outside Inn.”
Lucy immediately sprang up from her chair. “I
love
that name, Alessa,” she said enthusiastically. “Remo, can we get a sign to put on the house?”
“You bet we can!” he replied. Then he turned to Alessa “It’s the perfect name for our new home. God, I love you, Alessa.”
Lucy piped up, “Me too. I love you too!”
Alessa felt content as she finished her dinner. She couldn’t have thought of a better way to end the weekend.
Remo had a sign made of wood that he hung over the threshold of the porch. It read: “Outside Inn.” Over the next week, each of the selected teenagers and children arrived, some with nothing more than the clothes on their back. Remo beamed, realizing how lucky he was to be a part of this moment. Alessa couldn’t have been happier. At the end of the first week, Ebby came over to meet the new residents. They all greeted her with smiles. Alessa had told them so much about her that by the time she arrived to meet them, it was as if they had known Ebby for a long time. And they trusted her, because Alessa did. Alessa, of course, was blind to how powerful her influence was on them.
Ebby had, in the meantime, worked with her contacts all over the city to furnish the apartments with used furniture. She even reached out to a friend in the hotel business who managed to get them beds and linens. None of the furniture was new or represented the latest in designs, but it was functional and made each of the apartments feel homey and lived in. Alessa and Remo had persuaded local grocers and store owners at the Italian Market on Ninth Street in South Philadelphia to donate day-old food that would normally be thrown away. This provided all six apartments with food in their refrigerators. Each group of six residents had the responsibility of cooking their own meals and cleaning their apartment. The whole house worked together to keep an eye on the children.
At ten that evening, Ebby and Alessa walked up to the top-floor apartment of Outside Inn. Remo and Lucy were on the sofa watching a sitcom.
Remo looked up. “Long day. We’re beat.”
“It was long, but worth every minute,” Alessa concluded.
Ebby stepped into the room and went over to Lucy to give her hugs and kisses. The child was always happy to see her.
“Hey Ebby, come into my bedroom,” she invited. “Alessa bought me a goldfish. This is the
first
time in my whole life that I have a pet!”
Ebby laughed. “Yes, a goldfish is certainly worth waiting a whole life-time for, even though for you, it’s ten years. Hardly an old lady yet! Let’s go see your new pet. Have you given it name?”
Lucy proudly announced, “Yeah, I named her Ebster.”
Ebby put her arm around her. “You named your first pet after me?”
In a very serious voice, Lucy explained, “Well, you’re the one who helped Alessa and me. And now we are helping other kids.”
Ebby hugged her. “Well, thanks, Lucy. I’m honored.”
In the living room, Remo looked at Alessa with concern.
“What’s wrong, Remo?” she asked.
Remo hesitated, feeling embarrassed and a little selfish. “Nothing is really
wrong,”
he said. “I guess I’m just a little worried at the thought of not having a lot of time together with the others living here now. I mean, I never really thought about all these other people living with us.”
Alessa slid across the sofa and sat on his lap. “Listen,” she said, “they’re all getting settled. In the next few days, they will get into their groove and our life will be back to normal.”
Remo eyed her up. “Really?”
Alessa kissed the tip of his nose. “I promise.”